it came upon a midnight clear...

can you guess from the title what this fortnight's assignment is at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥? yepper, it's to include a clear element of some sort in your holiday card design... from professionally silk screened transparencies, (oh hambly, how we miss thee!) to digital elements printed on ink-jet transparency, to journal card overlays, to acrylic embellishments, or even something as simple as a window or shaker card with plastic packaging taped behind the aperture. like... say... this one:

clear elements: a scrap of inkjet transparency used to create the shaker card window, plus tiny clear acrylic balls inside the shaker; vintage sheet music from my stash; patterned paper: blue fern studio, glitz design, making memories; glitter paper: american crafts POW; white kromekote cardstock: the paper cut; deer and birch dies: impression obsession; nestabilities frame dies: spellbinders; ink: colorbox; adhesives: scotch brand gluestick, 3m foam tape, elmers brand gluetape, sewing machine

this card is an object lesson on the slippery slope of crafty enable-age: the deer and birch trees are impression obsession dies that belong to stephanie. i've always admired them, so when she came east recently for some irl art time, i asked her to bring them, thinking it'd save me from having to purchase them myself. soooooooooooo wrong!!! of course as soon as i used them, i wanted to make a card (see above); and as soon as i made a card, i wanted to make another card; and as soon as i started thinking about another card, i realized i was going to run out of my pre-cut elements. so obviously i *needed* to own the dies. yeah. let this be a lesson to you... just cave right away and buy the dies, lol, it's quicker! :)

speaking of stephanie, she's also made a card that is clearly awesome... why not check that out at ♥JINGLE BELLES♥ right now?!